Error during installation

I am running an older computer with a P3 1GHz cpu and 256MB ram.  I tried to boot Ubuntu onto said system and it seems to be going fine for a few minutes.  It says Ubuntu and a little progress bar goes back and forth.  But after a while it goes to a black screen with white script telling me that there are errors and failures somewhere.  I waited for that to go away and now the screen is just black.  Its been black for quite some time now.  If anyone can tell me what this means or what i can do to fix it, i would greatly appreciate it.  Thanks.